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Guest Post: Allison M. Dickson, Author of Strings

Hello! Welcome to The Real World According To Sam! If you were here last week you might remember the Spotlight Promotion we had for the book Strings. Today, you get to read some words straight from the author's pen about being a horror writer. Without further ado, here is a guest post by Allison M. Dickenson:

------------------------------------------------------------------

“What’s in the Mind
of a Horror Author,”

by Allison M. Dickson

I am a horror author, but I
promise I'm not a freak. There isn't a body hidden beneath the floorboards in
my house, and I don't have anyone tied up in my basement (because I don't have
a basement, but that's beside the point). I also don't revel in violence and
I'm far from titillated by blood and gore. If anything, I'm as much disturbed
by some of what I write as any of my readers are, and I'm even more prone to
being afraid of some of the movies and books I read. I don't know where my
desire to write about the dark side of life comes from necessarily, and I'm not
sure I want to know. I'm only grateful that it's there, because it's given me a
career.

In a recent interview, I was
asked what's inside the mind of a horror author and I was later asked to expand
upon it. Originally, I said horror authors’ minds aren’t much different from
any others but they do have this desire to shine a light on the darkness that
lives in all of us. People who aren't a fan of the horror genre aren't without
this darkness. They just don’t like to look at it, and that's okay. There are
people who like to highlight on the positive and make people feel good, but make
no mistake: horror writers like to make you feel good too. Only, it's more of
an inverse process. Anyone who has ever been through a rough time in their
lives, be it losing a loved one or financial hardship or being the victim of a
violent crime, I think we can all say that when we reach a place of peace and
healing, we have a new gratitude for it.

To get technical about it, horror
stories try to simulate those events by activating the same parts of the brain
that are active during times of peril. It serves the same purpose that minor
thrill seeking does, like riding a rollercoaster or skydiving. By the time you
put down that book or finish that movie, we want you to feel more alive than
you did before. We want you to feel glad it's over and that you have this
otherwise normal and sort of mundane life, but at least you're not being held
captive in a decrepit old mansion by a human spider. Sometimes when I watch
movies or read books that are too positive, the opposite happens to me. I look
at my life and find it starkly unfulfilling and mundane in comparison, and that
can depress me. Maybe that's just an odd quirk about my mind, but I think it's
why I tend to stray to the darker side of things. I crave that shift in
perspective, and I think a lot of people out there do too.

Another thing people assume about
dark fiction authors is that we are cynics and pessimists in daily life. Now, I
don't want to fool anyone into thinking that this isn't the case. Writers can
be some of the most jaded people out there. In many cases, it's why they write.
But I also argue that there is a lot of optimism buried in horror, because the
underlying message in a lot of it is: "See how much WORSE things could
be?" My book STRINGS is probably the most grim piece of fiction I have ever
written or will ever write, but it was also written by an optimist who believes
that human beings are as equally capable of good as they are of bad, and that
even the worst among us have a spark of humanity that can be coaxed into a
flame under the right conditions. Of course, it could just as easily go the
other way too, but that's not pessimism. That's just reality.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Author’s bio:

Allison M. Dickson is a writer of
dark contemporary fiction living in Dayton, Ohio. Though STRINGS is her

debut
novel, she has been writing for a number of years, with several short stories
(including “Dust” and “Under the Scotch Broom”) available on Amazon. Two of her
stories were featured The Endlands Volume 2 from Hobbes End Publishing. In
2014, Hobbes End will also be releasing her dystopian science fiction novel,
THE LAST SUPPER, and she is independently producing her pulpy dieselpunk noir
novel, COLT COLTRANE AND THE LOTUS KILLER to be released in November of 2013.
When she isn’t writing, she’s one of the co-hosts of the weekly Creative
Commoners podcast. She might also be
found gaming, watching movies, hiking the local nature preserve with her
husband and two kids who also serve as willing guinea pigs for her many
culinary experiments.

This concludes a post here at The Real World According To Sam. If anyone is interested in reading a sample of the book Strings, I have the first chapter. Due to my potential audience I chose not to put it up as a post.

However, if you are thinking of purchasing the book or just want a taste to see if its something you'd like to read, you can e-mail me at sammiekparkland@sbcglobal.net OR message The Real World According To Sam on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealWorldAccordingToSam

If you liked this post and would like to see some more like it, let us know! Leave a comment!

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